Author Lee Reich is doing talks based on his two excellent books, “Uncommon Fruits for the Home Garden” and something we all aspire to, “Weedless Gardening.” More talks are planned on container vegetable gardening, growing orchids, composting, lawn care, cooking with herbs, garden pesticides and more. Penn State’s Alan Michael will give tours of the latest, greatest flowers about to hit the market, and the place will be crawling with Master Gardeners eager to answer your gardening questions. There’s even a native plant sale.

It’s all included for $10 per vehicle.

If you’ve never been there, the center is a 160-acre farm about a mile off the Esbenshade Road exit of I-283, about 45 minutes from Harrisburg.

For a long time, the place was mainly an agriculture-research farm where Penn State researchers carried out experiments to help Pennsylvania farmers. But little by little, space has been carved out for projects of valuable use to home gardeners.

The crown jewel is the annual flower trials, where Michael and his team of researchers and volunteers plant 1,300 different varieties of annuals to see how they fare in central Pa. summers. It’s a glorious sight — ribbon after colorful ribbon of potted flower rows blooming their heads off.

The main idea is to give growers unbiased, side-by-side information so they can decide which flowers to grow for garden centers and ultimately, you. These trials are so big and so well done that they’re regarded as one of the best in the U.S.

For home gardeners, you not only get to see the best flowers money can buy but also get a sneak peek at what’s coming out next year. The No. 1 2011 head-turner for me: a black velvet petunia that’s so dark burgundy that it looks like, well, flower petals of black velvet.

The flower trials are augmented by interesting vegetable trials conducted by Penn State Extension Educator Steve Bogash. Ever see a “high tunnel?” Bogash is growing hundreds of tomatoes in one of these cutting-edge, season-extending greenhouse-like structures that’s 200 feet long.

He’s also testing hundreds more tomatoes being treated with a variety of new-fangled “friendly fungi” that are touted as non-chemical ways to control assorted tomato diseases. These products (Companion, Root Shield, Actinovate and Rootmate) are just now coming to the market, but do they work? See for yourself in the comparison planting. I didn’t notice much difference last week, but it’s still early.

Also interesting is Bogash’s plantings of hundreds of pots of cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and squash to see how well these do in containers.

Idea Garden

The newest additions are in a half-acre section dubbed the Master Gardener Idea Garden. “We’re demonstrating things you can try in your own garden,” Lancaster County Master Gardener Warren Wolf says.

This is where you’ll see not one but two rain gardens in action to determine if it’s something worth copying at home. These runoff-reducing gardens show what plants make sense in this kind of garden.

The Idea Garden also has a large native-plant garden (including a bog area), a series of raised-bed gardens, a pollinator garden, a shed planted with a green roof of various sedums, an ornamental herb and vegetable garden showing various growing techniques, plus espaliered fruit trees growing on a fence.

If that doesn’t fill your day, wagon tours will take you around the rest of the farm to see what researchers are up to — things such as studying the health and habit of pollinating bees, testing the merits of no-till land, forecasting when plant diseases will show up and experimenting with biofuels that Pennsylvania can produce.

$10 per carload is a bargain. Although the farm is open daily for self-guided touring, July 31 is the only day when everyone’s there for one big information blowout.

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